Ever since the first Amazon Fire TV was released in April of last year, I’ve been tracking its appstore’s steady growth. That ends today because, since Fullscreen, Inc. began their barrage of apps made from YouTube channels, the number of Fire TV apps is meaningless and misleading. Fullscreen, the largest YouTube network with over 50,000 channels under its umbrella, has been steadily releasing procedurally generated apps for their partnered YouTube channels since the beginning of September. They have released 1,542 apps so far, at an average rate of 70 apps per day, with no signs of letting up. This flood of apps, all of which approved by Amazon, has disingenuously pushed the Fire TV’s appstore beyond 4,000 apps.

The torrent of Fullscreen apps, along with over 250 tablet games released just prior to the announcement of the new Fire TV, conveniently pushed Amazon’s streaming platform past Roku in total apps, allowing Amazon to advertise app count superiority in their comparison chart above.

The cynics among you may feel Amazon encouraged Fullscreen to release their apps to boost the Fire TV’s app count. Regardless, the Fire TV appstore is well on its way to joining the Google Play Store and the Apple iTunes App Store in being filled primarily with apps that nobody uses. I’ll continue highlighting notable new apps and weekly listing all new apps, but the total Fire TV app count is now meaningless.

24 comments

Yeah, Amazon should have some kind of policy against redundant apps like these. I used to be able to look at apps from the past 30 days and hope to find something good. Now, I won’t even bother looking at that list since its flooded with crap.

If they want to have one app for their channel that’s fine but an app per channel is useless and crazy. If I see an app is from Fullscreen I stay far away.

While Google and Apple stores might have crapware as well, the whole Amazon ecosystem just puts me off more and more every day. It is just so disjointed and unorganized. The app store is confusing and app compatibility is inconsistent. Photo upload is there, but it the organization is confusing and slow. I have a fire phone and tablet and it seems to have to integration with my Fire TV. The prime music doesn’t make any sense on any of the devices. I am going to give FireOS 5 a chance, but it doesn’t look like it is going to change much. It leaves me tempted to check out the Apple TV, and I really hate saying that.

You guys are nuts. Fullscreen has made it easy for YT developers to create apps for FTV. Amazon’s search engine makes it easy to find the ones that appeal. YT is the second most streamed service and FS provides better access than YT channels. More power to them!

I disagree. Most YT apps are painful to navigate (when I watch YT on the Roku, I navigate with a paired computer). While the FTV YT app is pretty snappy, searching without a keyboard is not fun and results are inconsistent. You have to login to view your subscriptions. These apps are more like podcasts. The content is curated.

“Meaningless” is an incredibly disrespectful term. While these apps may not have any value to you, the same may not hold true to others. Especially any YT artiest, where this is the only means to get an app live on FTV.

His use of “meaningless” in this case is in tracking the NUMBER of apps. That number is no longer a true reflection of how many UNIQUE apps there are in the app store, since ~1500 of them are just single channels. The number is artificially inflated, if you were tracking apps available for the AFTV. It’s all about context…

How do you determine what an UNIQUE app is? If were going to discount FullScreen we might as well discount these.

AF Labs, Serenity, DigitalX, and EdgeWay combined make up over 200 screensaver apps. Future Today Inc and Lightcast.com both have over 100 apps. These 6 devs make up over 10% of the FTV catalog. How many Fireplace and bible apps do you really use?

Plus there’s the 270+ other tablet apps that Amazon pushed live the other day.

Every app has its place and the size of the FTV catalog really goes to show you how strong the platform is and much amazon wants to grow it for the customers.

Goths Doing Things is as unique as The Walking Dead. Its all in the eye of the beholder.

As natebetween said, my use of “meaningless” refers to the number of apps. I am not saying Fullscreen’s apps or YouTubers are meaningless.

The rate at which the number of Fire TV apps increased used to represent the health of the Fire TV app ecosystem. If it ramped up, you could say the Fire TV was getting good attention from developers. If it stayed flat, than developers were ignoring the Fire TV.

With the flood of Fullscreen apps, the number of Fire TV apps is no longer a representation of the platform’s health, and in that sense, the number of Fire TV apps is meaningless.

On the subject of apps, I’d be interested to know what apps AFTVnews readers use on their Fire TVs. Apart from the occasional game I really only use Kodi. I’m sure I’m missing a lot of great stuff, so a post on recommended apps would be great

First, a lot of games. FTV has very good game apps and the Amazon controller is very good. You can also use an xbox360 usb controller. Otherwise, Netflix, mostly. The Plex app is good. I watch a lot of vacation apps.